Further Response:
Shakespeare's Acting Career

Part 9 of "Critically Examining Oxfordian Claims"

Pat Dooley's second post, reacting to SHAXICON, is such a gross
misrepresentation of the facts that I hardly know where to begin. Why
don't I just go through it point by point.

DOOLEY:
"The Shaxicon work is interesting but doesn't tell
us much about the authorship question. First,
let's address the acting issue. It turns out that
the only cast lists that include William
Shakespeare are posthumous. The Ben Jonson First
Folio was published in 1616, the year William
Shakespeare died."

Well, technically you don't know that the Jonson lists were posthumous; the
Jonson Folio was not entered in the Stationers Register, so it might have
come out while Shakespeare was still alive. That being said, I should
point out that the cast lists in the Jonson First Folio were the first to
be printed in the entire Elizabethan theatre; no actor appeared in a
printed cast list before 1616. Also, I don't understand this standard
Oxfordian dismissal of all posthumous evidence about Shakespeare. I take
it the idea is that the conspirators waited until Shakespeare was safely
dead before they started fabricating evidence. Well, as I pointed out in a
previous post, all of the evidence for Christopher Marlowe's literary
career is posthumous. By your standards, you should dismiss all evidence
that Marlowe was a playwright or poet, and if you don't, you're being
wildly inconsistent.

DOOLEY:
"While Shakespeare was alive and supposedly acting
in London, he left only one record of so doing -
the allusion to Shake-Scene in Groatsworth of Wit."

I'm not sure I follow you. What about:

The court payment in 1595 to "William Kempe William Shakespeare &
Richard Burbage servantes to the Lord Chamberlain"

The 1599 listing of the Globe Theater as being occupied by "Willielmo
Shakespeare et aliorum"

The three contemporary legal documents (two from 1601 and one from
1608) which list the primary tenants of the Globe theater as "William
Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, gentlemen."

The Return from Parnassus Part 2, in which the actor "Kemp"
refers to
"our fellow Shakespeare"

The license for the creation of the King's Men in 1603, in which
"William Shakespeare" appears second.

The account of red cloth distributed to the King's Men for James's
procession into London in 1604; they are prominently identified as
"Players," and William Shakespeare appears first on the list.

The will of Augustine Phillips, member of the King's Men, which leaves
money to "my fellow William Shakespeare" as well as to seven other members
of the King's Men.

I'm well aware that Oxfordians try to dismiss all these perfectly ordinary
records because they conflict with what Oxfordians want to believe, but if
you want to I'll discuss any or all of them and show how groundless such
dismissals are.

Oh, bull. The records of Shakespeare's acting career are perfectly
ordinary for the time, and are more than what we have for the vast majority
of Elizabethan actors.

DOOLEY:
"One only has to consult E K Chamber's exhaustive
compilation of acting records in "The Elizabethan
Stage V.2" to see how deficient Shakespeare is in
the acting credits department. He rates just two
lines (including two question marks). Burbage
gets five pages."

Actually, Burbage gets three pages, plus two lines on a different page at
the beginning and two lines on a different page at the end.

DOOLEY:
"Condell gets a full page. Kempe gets two and a
half pages. Tarlton gets three and a half pages.
If Shakespeare was an actor, and I don't doubt
that he may have been an actor, his appearances
must have been severely limited."

In The Elizabethan Stage, Chambers presents biographical sketches of
people involved in the Elizabethan theater in whatever area they are best
known for. Burbage, Condell, Kempe, and Tarlton were best known as actors,
so their biographies appear in the Actors section. Tarlton was also a
playwright, so in the section on Playwrights he gets a brief listing, along
with a pointer to his full bio in the Actors section. William Shakespeare
is primarily known as a playwright, so his bio is in the Playwrights
section; since he was also an actor, he gets a brief listing in the Actors
section along with a pointer to his full bio under Playwrights. The length
of his entry under Actors has nothing to do with the amount of evidence for
his acting career, since as I said before this is greater that for most
other actors of the day. Thomas Heywood was an actor for over 20 years,
longer than Shakespeare, yet he gets a line and a half in the Actors
section; this is because he was better known as a playwright, and his
two-page bio can be found under Playwrights.

DOOLEY:
"If he had played anything like the number of parts
that the Shaxicon work suggests then it is highly
improbable that he would have left so few records."

No, it's not, as I've been trying to explain. The records we have are
about what we should expect, and are perfectly consistent with SHAXICON.

DOOLEY:
"(He did leave plenty of evidence of his financial
involvement in the theater business, so it is even
odder that the acting records are so, well,
non-existent.)"

Huh? Almost all the evidence of Shakespeare's financial involvement in the
theater comes from lawsuits filed after his death. So you accept this
evidence, and even try to use it to support your position, yet you dismiss
the (marginally) posthumous acting evidence from the Jonson Folio. I see.

DOOLEY:
"The alternatives we are thus left with are:
(i) somebody selectively destroyed Shakespeare's
acting records
(ii) the Shaxicon work is completely wrong
(iii) the laws of probability got suspended, yet
again, for William Shakespeare
(iv) some other guy was the actor/author"

Try (v), none of the above. No "laws of probability" have to be suspended,
because as I've been saying, the surviving records of Shakespeare's acting
career are similar to those of other members of the Chamberlain's/King's
Men, and are what we should expect.

DOOLEY:
"The Shaxicon suggests that the author took older
parts. That would sit well with Oxford acting
in-cognito, since he would have been 50 by 1600,
elderly by Elizabethan standards.
"Sonnet 110 says:
'Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,...'
which could be interpreted as saying that the
author had appeared on the stage, and, like a true
feudal aristocrat, had shamed himself by doing
something so unthinkable."

So you're actually suggesting that Oxford had an acting career spanning
some 20 years, presumably as a member of the Chamberlain's/King's Men,
despite the complete lack of external evidence for such a thing, and
despite the considerable evidence of Oxford's activities over the years,
not including acting. I don't usually apply the word "fantasy" to
Oxfordian scenarios, but it applies here.

DOOLEY:
"Pretty flimsy conjecture, I admit, but no shakier
than postulating an extensive acting career for
someone who left just one acting record while he
lived."

I'd say your entire case, particularly the attempt to explain away William
Shakespeare's acting career, is pretty flimsy. No, make that very
flimsy.